Following Lando’s season-opening victory in Melbourne, McLaren had been tipped by many as favourites in China, and so when Oscar crossed the finish line in Shanghai ahead of Lando to seal our 50th 1-2 finish in a Formula 1 Grand Prix, it was the result many people had expected… but, it wasn’t necessarily the way anyone at track would have predicted it to happen. 

The favourites tag isn’t something any team will generally ever accept, even as the weekend unfolds and a truer picture of one-lap pace, race pace and overtaking potential emerges. A team would never expect to start at the front in a sport as unpredictable as Formula 1, but they will of course prepare for such a scenario. And starting a race at the front with a competitive car is a ticklish position to be in.  

That’s because, bluntly, it becomes yours to lose. Take Monza last year, for example, the circumstances of which bear more than a little similarity to the position in Shanghai: a new surface, bringing with it faster lap-times, but also a difficult-to-quantify risk of higher degradation and graining. At the Italian Grand Prix, we did the favoured two-stop race, got both cars on the podium but left wondering whether we could have won.

Shanghai, freshly resurfaced, held the same perils: our car was strong and Pirelli’s sims suggested a two-stop was the way to go… but at the back of everyone’s mind was the thought that a different strategy might be quicker.  

“When tracks are resurfaced you can get some unusual behaviour,” says Randy Singh, Strategy and Sporting. “We saw some extensive and significant graining on Friday and Saturday here, but we also saw the behaviour of the tyres (or perhaps how they were driven!) improve a lot into the Race on Sunday.” 

Philosophically, it’s an interesting situation to be in. With a slower car, if your goal is to win (not always a given) then the way to do it is to roll the dice, take the long-odds approach and do what the quicker car doesn’t. If you’ve got the quicker car, and are in front, then the task is to cover whatever others are doing… but that’s not always straightforward when everyone goes into a race with an open mind.

What was expected  

Everyone had the same plan in China, arriving on Sunday afternoon with both sets of Hard tyres unused and ready to go. This echoed Pirelli’s opinion, which, based on their simulations, suggested a two-stop race was the fastest way to the flag, with a Medium>Hard>Hard strategy at the top of their list.  

That list only contained variations on the two-stop theme… the one-stop and three-stop races weren’t in their thinking. However, the teams were giving both serious consideration.  

That’s not a sign of disagreement. Pirelli’s sims are tasked with finding the quickest way to the flag. Whereas, team sims are all about beating your opponents – and those two things aren’t necessarily the same. The Sprint had suggested a one-stop race would be tough, but with warmer temperatures and more rubber going down, it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility.  

“At a Sprint weekend you always get some good learning for the Race during the Sprint, however, you do have to be careful that things don’t change into Sunday – it’s rare for them to do so, but certainly here in Shanghai they did,” says Randy.

The early laps  

The grid had Medium starters all the way down to P13, and then Lance Stroll in P14, who was the first of three cars on Hard. Neither tyre restricted the options available later in the race. If graining was less severe than expected, then the one-stop was in play - if it was worse, the three-stop became an option.

We enjoyed a dream start as Oscar got away cleanly from Pole and Lando nipped past George Russell to take P2. The leading pack stayed together in the first stint, with Lando following Oscar at around two seconds, with Russell two seconds behind him.

The undercut would likely be powerful, but to keep the prospect of a one-stop race on the table, looking after the Medium tyre to potentially extend the first stint was the way to go.  

Pierre Gasly was the first to change his tyres, pitting on Lap 10 from P16. That dragged in three more cars on Lap 11, two more on Lap 12 and, key to our race, Hamilton and Max Verstappen on Lap 13. That triggered our response with Oscar pitting on Lap 14 (followed in by Russell) and Lando (followed in by Charles Leclerc) on Lap 15, both fitting the same Hard compound as their rivals.  

Lando was undercut by Russell, which wasn’t unexpected, but the race position hadn’t offered us many options: had both cars boxed on the same lap, with only two seconds separating them, Lando would have needed to queue. Equally, Oscar didn’t have a big enough gap that the pit-stop order could have been reversed. Lando could have protected his position by going earlier – but this leaves open the potential for rivals to go long, build a tyre delta and attack at the end of the race. That wasn’t a door we wanted to leave open.  

Ultimately, the team believed it had the legs to take the position back on track, and so took the option that best fitted that strategy. And ultimately, Lando had enough pace to regain second, passing Russell and the yet-to-pit Alex Albon shortly after returning to the track. 

Locking-in 

Lance Stroll wasn’t a player in our Chinese Grand Prix, but his lap-times were of huge interest, with Oscar asking for regular updates from the start of his second stint. Stroll was the canary in the cage: running from the start with a Hard tyre fitted and the best guide to how that tyre would behave. The team were looking closely at the Aston Martin driver’s lap times, listening to his comms, and watching video to see evidence of graining or wear on his tyres. With Stroll setting good lap times and not visibly suffering heavy wear, the one-stop race started to look good.

“Probably after about 10–15 laps on the Hard,” Oscar said when asked when the team had made the decision. “The Hard behaved much better than we all expected… Certainly for me, I went into the race thinking it would be a two-stop and then even early in the race I still thought that, and was pleasantly surprised that the Hard was as strong as it was.”

The strategy for the second stint was much the same as the first: keep a watching brief, don’t get excited, and don’t push the tyres harder than the cars behind. The one thing the team were keen to do in this stint was give Lando a little breathing room to guard against another undercut from Russell. A dozen laps into the stint, with his gap to Russell at 2.4s, Will Joseph asked him to push it out to 4s, which would be enough of a gap to react to whatever the Mercedes driver did.

Oscar was asked to stretch out a little bit too, to give Lando some clean air to work with. When those gaps were established, the team locked the lap times down again and concentrated on looking after the tyres. Effective, if not the most stimulating way to go racing.

Stick or Twist? 

While it wasn’t in our interests to make any sudden moves, somebody was going to and, on Lap 37, that somebody was Lewis Hamilton. Running P5, a second stop, onto another set of Hard tyres, only cost the Ferrari man one position. He had been 12 seconds behind Lando, so the team didn’t have to respond immediately – but there was always the potential he could trigger a cascade to envelope Verstappen, Leclerc and Russell.  

Had that happened, we may have responded – if not necessarily for pace then certainly to guard against a late-race Safety Car – but with the cars behind us staying out, and Hamilton not making rapid inroads, both sides of our garage were content to keep going to the flag, marking the first time since 2003 that we’ve won the opening two races of a season.

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